So far, in a photo-resist process, one of semiconductor manufacturing processes, for instance, a resist is coated on a surface of a semiconductor wafer (hereinafter referred to as an wafer W), the resist is exposed with a predetermined pattern followed by developing, and thereby a resist pattern is formed. Such process is generally carried out using a system in which an aligner is connected to a coating/developing apparatus that coats and develops the resist.
In the substrate processing, it is necessary that a line width of the resist pattern is formed with a predetermined line width and resist patterns in X and Y directions of the resist pattern is formed as scheduled relative to a pattern already formed on a base film at a surface portion (i.e. a thin film to be etched with the resist pattern) on which the resist pattern is formed. For this reason, conventionally a line width and positional relationship (overlay) in a horizontal direction with respect to the base film is inspected by use of, for instance, a stand-alone type inspection apparatus disposed separately from a coating/developing apparatus. The inspection of the line width has been carried out by bombarding an electron beam on a surface of a substrate using an inspection unit with a scanning electron microscope (SEM), followed by analyzing a reflection output thereof. Furthermore, as to the overlay, large and small patterns for inspection 1, with each of them being a quadrangular type (1a and 1b) is formed on the base film by using an inspection unit provided with an optical system with a diffraction grating, and the light is irradiated with a light source scanning and reflection intensity is analyzed, thereby, as shown in FIG. 17B, whether a projection of a small inspection pattern 1a falls within a large inspection patter 1b or not is investigated, and thereby the overlay has been inspected.
However, according to the above-mentioned method, various problems remain to be solved as explained below. In other words, depending on inspection items, a plurality of inspection units is used for processing; as a result, including a length of time for transferring the substrate between the respective units, a length of time necessary for inspection is also quite long, resulting in being one of the causes of the deterioration of throughput, and a footprint of the inspection apparatuses is large. Furthermore, when a defect of the resist pattern occurs for the subsequent substrates, similar defect pattern is likely to occur different in demand to inspect as speedily as possible.